April 21, 2006

So what's next?

This is one of the best emails I've ever gotten:

Subject: "So what's next"
As we near the GoLive – you are probably wondering, so what’s next for our great team? I’d like to hear from each of you – what do you think we should be working on starting next week? Do you want a change – what would you like to do?

It came from the project team leader.

Leadership indeed... giving the team a chance to have a voice in both what the team does and what each of us gets to work on.

Comments

Well, it started off by stating my desire to drink more wine and watch more Oprah. It ended with the something about the team buying me wine and leaving me alone from 3-4 each day so I could watch Oprah in peace. LOL!

Seriously, the core part of my reply was two-fold; one, we need to continue our quest to better understand our users and, two, that we need to get better at embracing change.

Well, often "understandIng" only comes when an entity is willing to set aside old presumptions in the face of new realities--and without malice. And change is only embraced if it's viewed, not as "change," but merely as the unrolling of the natural course of events--and without fear. There's some harmonic convergence tucked in there somewhere. Has to be.